Time, Turns, and Adventures

Time

Time—Time is one of the most critical constraints in Twilight Heroes. Each "day" in the game begins at 6 p.m. in Twilight. It is assumed your hero has finished work for the day, eaten a solid meal, and had time to change into his or her disguise.

From there on out, managing time is an important aspect of the game. Many actions, including patrolling, resting, and certain other activities (like playing in the Virtual Reality Gaming Center) use up time. These actions are always marked with the number of minutes that the action will take, so that you can see ahead of time what you're getting into. Other actions, such as changing equipment, shopping, using skills, checking your journal, or looking around most of the top-level areas of the map (anything not marked with a duration) do not use up any time.

Gotta Work

During the week you have to go to work at 7:00 a.m., no matter what your bedtime is. Having energy left doesn't mean you can skip your job. Your extra turns will carry over to the next day.

Bedtime—You also begin each day with a "bedtime," which reflects the amount of energy you have before you need to go to sleep for the night. The default bedtime is 9:30 p.m. However, this can be extended in a number of ways, including drinking energizing beverages or using similar items, or getting an adrenaline rush for completing important tasks, such as gaining a level. Also, if you don't use all of your time on a given day (in other words, you decide to go to bed early and get some extra rest), that remaining time will roll over to the next day, meaning you can stay up even later. There is a limit to how well rested you can be, though, beyond which point any extra bedtime will be lost.

Turns—Most of the game is based on the concept of time, but occasionally it's important to think of things in terms of turns. A turn, essentially, consists of any action your hero takes that consumes time. It doesn't matter how much time: whether it's patrolling an area for 5 minutes or playing a VR game for 10 minutes, that single action constitutes a turn. This is important to know, because there are a number of aspects of the game that hinge on turns. Most importantly, a number of items or effects that allow you to regenerate HP and PP act at the end of each turn. Also, while in the beginning most actions default to taking exactly 5 minutes, later in the game there are a number of ways in which your hero might be slowed down or sped up, so that patrolling could take 5.5 minutes, or 4.5 minutes, or some other amount of time. So it's important to understand that anything which happens once per turn is not affected by the duration of the turn. This also appears in the left-hand character pane, where the approximate number of turns left is calculated based on the current time, your bedtime, and the average amount of time it takes to patrol. Depending on what you actually do, this number might not be very accurate, but is intended as a rough estimate to give you some idea of how many actions you have left.

Days—Twilight works on a 6-day cycle, which consists of 5 weekdays and one weekend day. Twilight actually has a seven-day week just like the rest of us, but it's assumed that one day a week you need to rest, relax, heal, and take care of real-life stuff like visiting friends and family, or spending quality time with your pets. Since your hero isn't doing anything important on that day, it simply doesn't exist in the game, because boy that would be boring! This means that during the five weeknights (Sunday, Moonday, Thewsday, Winsday, and Starsday) there is also a limit to how late you can stay up: 7 a.m. Even if your bedtime would normally extend beyond that point, at 7 you have to go home, clean up, and get ready for work. It's a shame, but that's just the way the world works. (Your extra time will roll over to the next day, though.) The exception to this rule is Frayday night, when you can stay out as long as you want because the following day is a weekend.

Getting More Turns—Once you have played all of your turns for the day (and you've had your fill of caffeine and sugar), or if you have turns left but it's "time to go to work," the only thing you can do is wait for rollover, at which point it will be come the next day in Twilight. Rollover occurs at roughly 11:00 p.m. Eastern Standard time (that's 3 or 4 AM GMT, depending on Daylight Saving Time). Right now rollover only takes a very short time, but if you're online when it happens it will log you out of the game to make sure everything is reset properly for the next day.

Notes

There is a limit of 4 minutes to the minimum amount of time a turn can take.

The limit to how well rested you can be, i.e. how much time can roll over to the next day, is a bedtime of 3 PM. Extra bedtime beyond that at rollover is lost. However, it is perfectly possible to start the day with a bedtime of 3 PM, and increase it later by using caffeine, sugar or other methods.

When you try to adventure, rest, or play in the Virtual Reality Gaming Center when your bed time is less time away than the number of minutes required for that action, or after 7:00 AM on any day but Frayday you get a message:

Trying to adventure, with no time:

Can't Fight, Too Tired

You're too worn out for the night. You've got to go home and sleep or you're not going to make it through the work day tomorrow. You don't want to get fired, do you?

Trying to adventure, after 7:00 AM:

Can't Fight, Gotta Work

You've still got energy left, and you'd like to keep fighting, but you just don't have any time left. Work starts in an hour, and you've got to get home and get cleaned up. (You might wanna put some bandages on the worst of the wounds while you're at it.) But you've got to go now—you don't want to get fired, do you?

Trying to adventure, with no time, on Frayday:

Can't Fight, Too Tired

You're too worn out for the night. You've got to go home and sleep. Work has nothing to do with it, you're just plumb tired.

Trying to play, with no time:

Can't Play, Too Tired

You're too tired to play right now. You've got to go home now or you're not going to make it through the work day tomorrow. You don't want to get fired, do you?

Trying to play, after 7:00 AM:

Can't Play, Gotta Work

You've still got energy left, and you'd like to keep playing, but you just don't have any time left. Work starts in an hour, and you've got to get home and get cleaned up. (You might wanna put some bandages on the worst of the wounds while you're at it.) But you've got to go now—you don't want to get fired, do you?

Trying to rest, with no time:

Can't Rest, Too Tired

I know it sounds silly, but you're too tired to rest right now. In other words, as exhausted as you are, if you sat down now you'd fall asleep and then wake up to find yourself robbed and--even worse--possibly murdered. You've got to go home now or you're not going to make it through the work day tomorrow. You don't want to get fired, do you?

Trying to rest, after 7:00 AM:

Can't Rest, Gotta Work

Sadly, you don't have time to rest right now. Work starts in an hour, and you've got to get home and get cleaned up. If you wanted to sit around resting, you should have thought about that before staying up all night playing with your friends. "Playing" being code for "saving the city" and "with your friends" meaning "from evil."